Billionaires turn a blind eye to murder, toast Saudi Crown Prince

President Trump listens to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman speak during an official dinner at the White House on November 18, 2025. (Photo by BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP via Getty Images)

At a dinner at the White House on Tuesday, Donald Trump and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman were joined by a throng of billionaire CEOs. Among them were Elon Musk, Apple’s Tim Cook, Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, Dell’s Michael Dell, Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, Palantir’s Alex Karp, and Paramount’s David Ellison.

Saudi Arabia’s gruesome human rights record had kept some American oligarchs from working too closely with the kingdom, particularly following the 2018 murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, which U.S. intelligence determined was directed by Mohammed bin Salman. But under Trump, that appears to have changed, with the crown prince using the dinner to promise a $1 trillion investment in the US and its companies.

The state dinner was of special significance for Musk. It marked his first time returning to the White House since his bitter falling out with Trump in May. The president appeared to signal an end to the feud by affectionately patting Musk’s tummy as he made his grand entrance into the dining hall. Then, on Wednesday, during a speech at the Kennedy Center for a Saudi investment forum, Trump singled out Musk for ribbing. “You are so lucky I am with you, Elon. Has he ever thanked me properly?” Trump said. On X, Musk heeded Trump’s request that, writing, “I would like to thank President Trump for all he has done for America and the world.”

During the same investment forum, Musk announced on stage that his company, xAI, would partner with a Saudi state-backed artificial intelligence firm to build a massive data center in the Gulf country. The data center would use Nvidia chips and require up to 500 megawatts of electricity, making it more demanding than xAI’s data center in Memphis, Tennessee, which the company claims is the world’s largest supercomputer. Humain, the Saudi company partnering with xAI to build the data center, has received backing from Saudi Arabia’s $1 trillion sovereign wealth fund.

The deal marks a broadening of Musk’s long and, at times, fraught relationship with the kingdom. “The future of intelligence will be engineered through massive and efficient compute combined with the most-advanced A.I. models,” Musk said in a statement. “Humain’s capabilities enable us to build that future faster in Saudi Arabia.” The deal will also give Saudi Arabia greater access to xAI’s Grok chatbot models.

This Week in Musk:

• Public prosecutors in France are investigating Grok after Musk’s chatbot generated “Holocaust-denying comments.” (Le Monde)

• Grokipedia, Musk’s project to build a database of human knowledge to rival Wikipedia, includes entries that laud neo-Nazis, spread racist pseudoscientific theories, and spread white supremacist beliefs. Grokipedia states that all of its entries are “factchecked” by Grok. (The Guardian)

• SpaceX plans to inform NASA that it will not meet its 2027 deadline to send astronauts back to the surface of the moon. Instead, it expects its lunar lander to be ready sometime in 2028. (Politico)

• Tesla has received a permit to operate a ride-hailing service in Arizona. The permit does not allow Tesla to operate an autonomous taxi service, although the company plans to launch a Robotaxi service in Phoenix over the next year. (CNBC)

• Tesla is testing a demonstration Robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, that uses in-person and remote human operators who can take control of the vehicle at any time. Despite these precautions, Robotaxis have been involved in at least seven accidents. (Electrek)

Zuckerberg wins antitrust case to keep Meta empire whole

Mark Zuckerberg will be allowed to keep his social media empire intact after a federal judge ruled that Meta’s ownership of Instagram and WhatsApp — along with Facebook — does not constitute a monopoly. “Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the [Federal Trade Commission] must show that it continues to hold such power now. The court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so,” wrote US District Judge James Boasberg in his ruling.

The judgment stemmed from a 2020 lawsuit filed by the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that the company then known as Facebook was engaged in “illegal monopolization.” Meta, according to the FTC, built a monopoly by buying up Facebook’s emerging rivals rather than competing with them.

In his ruling, Boasberg argued that Meta has faced new competitors since the FTC first filed suit, primarily TikTok. “The landscape that existed only five years ago when the Federal Trade Commission brought this antitrust suit has changed markedly,” the judge wrote, adding, “While it once might have made sense to partition apps into separate markets of social networking and social media, that wall has since broken down.”

White House discussed firing CNN hosts in talks with Ellison

Senior White House officials want Paramount Skydance, which is owned by Larry Ellison’s son David, to acquire Warner Bros Discovery, according to a new report from The Guardian. At least one White House official reportedly spoke with the elder Ellison about firing specific hosts at CNN, which is a Warner Bros. media property, once the purchase is completed.

From The Guardian:

The discussions, according to people familiar with the matter, come as Paramount portrays itself as the best bid for Warner Bros Discovery, after the company announced last month it was open to offers, because it would have an easier time getting through regulatory review.

Ellison often speaks to connections at the White House but, in at least one of the calls, engaged in a dialogue about possibly axing some of the CNN hosts whom Donald Trump is said to loathe, including Erin Burnett and Brianna Keilar, the people said.

The conversation also touched on floating names to replace Burnett and the possibility of running CBS assets like its flagship 60 minutes program on CNN air – proposals that have animated the White House, the people said.

That discussion, described by people on the condition of anonymity because the issue is sensitive, was characterized as informal since Ellison does not have a formal role at Paramount. Still, he holds a major ownership stake in the company, which is run by his son, David Ellison.

A close ally of Trump, Larry Ellison is a Republican megadonor and the founder and executive chairman of software giant Oracle. He is also among the wealthiest people in the world, despite his net worth recently dropping by more than $130 billion amid investor concerns over Oracle’s plan to spend hundreds of billions on AI infrastructure.

Meanwhile, amid his efforts to acquire Warner Bros, David Ellison conspicuously attended the White House’s state dinner for the Saudi crown prince on Tuesday. The Ellisons have already used Paramount to charm Trump, including by acquiring The Free Press, a right-wing news site, and installing conservative media figures to lead CBS News. Paramount’s push to acquire Warner Bros, which, if approved, would make the combined entity the most powerful media company in the world, reportedly could involve Saudi funding.

Bezos launches new artificial intelligence startup

Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has launched a new AI startup called Project Prometheus. The company is focused on physical AI applications, including manufacturing, engineering, and sending humans to space. Bezos is leading the company as its co-CEO and has invested his own money in the startup, which has raised $6.2 billion in funding. This marks Mr. Bezos’s first official operational position at a company since leaving Amazon’s top job in 2021.

Sam Altman’s eye-scanning startup pushed employees to make work their sole priority

Tools for Humanity, a company founded by OpenAI’s Sam Altman, instructed employees to focus exclusively on work during a January staff meeting. “We will neither fail, nor will we be an average outcome, and that’s what we want and that’s all I care about every day and all you should care about every day, and nothing else should matter,” said Tools for Humanity CEO Alex Blania, according to a recording reviewed by Business Insider. “If you should care about something else, and if you want something else, you should just not be here. It’s as simple as that.”

The startup is best known for “Orb,” a program that aims to scan 1 billion irises to create a digital identity system capable of distinguishing between humans and AI. “We don’t care about politics, we don’t care about DEI, we don’t care about anything, we just care about how can we achieve the mission,” added Blania in his comments to staff.

This Week in Altman:

• Altman and his husband invested in a startup that hopes to use gene editing on embryos to birth children free of hereditary diseases. Prevenative, the startup, is looking to conduct tests in a country that allows embryo editing. The highly controversial practice has been banned in the US, the UK, and many other countries. (The Times)

• In a quarterly filing, Nvidia, the chip developer and most valuable company in the world, revealed that there is “no assurance” that it will follow through on its agreement to invest $100 billion into OpenAI. (CNBC)

• Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers resigned from OpenAI’s board following new revelations about his close personal relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. “We appreciate his many contributions and the perspective he brought to the Board,” the company’s board said in a statement. (CNN)

• Intuit, the monopolistic tax software company, signed a $100 million agreement to incorporate OpenAI’s models into its financial products. (Wall Street Journal)

• Altman’s plan “to build 250 gigawatts of capacity by 2033” to power data centers would result in OpenAI consuming nearly the same amount of electricity as the 1.5 billion people who populate India. (Truth Dig)

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Oligarch Roundup

Fox News partners with Palantir to build AI tools. Porter Berry, Fox News Digital’s editor-in-chief, announced Tuesday that the media company hired Palantir to create a proprietary suite of AI-powered tools for its journalists to use in the newsroom. Berry noted that Fox News does not use AI to generate its stories, saying, “This is a human end-to-end process and in the middle is AI.” (Axios)

Apple’s timeline to replace CEO Tim Cook. Cook, who has served as CEO for 14 years, could step down as soon as next year, as Apple’s board of directors works to build a concrete succession plan. (Financial Times)

Thiel reduces Tesla stake. Peter Thiel’s investment fund, Thiel Macro LLC, sold 207,613 Tesla shares last quarter, according to a new regulatory filing. Thiel and Musk are longtime associates. They helped found PayPal together, although Thiel later took part in a successful effort to force Musk out of the company in 2000. Their relationship appears to have improved in the years since, with Thiel investing heavily in SpaceX. (Electrek)

Bezos to sponsor Met Gala. The Amazon founder and his wife, Lauren Sánchez, were revealed as the lead sponsors of the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s annual bacchanal. (Daily Beast)